ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies

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Learning from the Sequence: The Use of Comics in Instruction

Introduction: Children and Comics

Comics have almost always been primarily an entertainment medium.
Their appeal to people in general, and children in particular, has
always been associated with a recreational setting, with only the
occasional foray into the didactic. This can be seen, for example,
in the well-mapped British Juvenile comics (e.g. Gifford, 1975, and
1987), which are primarily gag-based. The American superhero comics,
whose life stretches from the thirties to today, also well mapped
by people like Goulart, 1983, and 1991; Benton, 1993; Jones & Jacobs,
1997; and others, are pure escapism. In fact, most comics of all genres
throughout the world (Horne, 1976) are clearly indicative of a medium
whose main aims are humour, adventure, and fantasy. As a result,
comics within pedagogical contexts have always been relegated to
the affective domain, most often used as attention grabbing elements – as
signposts to more symbolically encoded instruction.

The genesis of modern comics was not juvenile, but a mirror of the
not-so-pleasant lives of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century
proletariat, serving their aspirations and denouncements (Kunzle,
1990). Even before that, the work of predecessors of the comics form
such as Rowlandson and Hogarth spelled out a society that reeked
of corruption and the sleazier side of social and political humanity
(Perry & Aldridge, 1967). Gifford, 1975, talking about Great
Britain, insists that:

"When the first comic paper was created by James Henderson
[in 1874] children were nowhere in sight. Funny Folks cost
one old penny for its eight packed pages of 'Funny Pictures, Funny
Notes, Funny Jokes, Funny Stories', but even that humble brown coin
was beyond the pocket of the Victorian child. So Henderson designed
his comic for adults: the cartoons were political, the Comic Fancy
Page topical and the stories satirical." (p. 6)

But it was not long before the very graphic humour, possible because
of the visual-verbal nature of the genre, attracted the young, and
the comics changed to accommodate the younger age groups. The humour,
adventure and fantasy in the comics on both sides of the Atlantic
claimed more and more youngsters. The humour was often black in nature
at first, and looked at from today's perspective, incredibly politically
incorrect. But it did attract millions to the comics format. It instilled
in readers a literacy in the unique language, which was made of sequential
storytelling that was primarily visual, but elaborated on by the
textual dimension. An interesting by-product of the nature of the
genre is that, though it was complex and elaborate, comics visual
literacy seemed to be more easily acquired by the young than the
symbolic literacy of morphemic syntax.

Often cartooned in style and following the economy-of-line technique,
comics successfully created "the illusion of life which can do without
any illusion of reality" (Gombrich, 1977, p. 284). This quality was
introduced at the very inception of the genre at the hands of Rodolphe
Töpffer. At the same time the pictures made sense "largely on the
basis of their reproduction of real-world informational cues" (Messaris,
1994, p.166), and they instantly appealed to the young.

Comics were also not like book illustrations, which according to
convention, "should continue or enhance the narrative or verse that
it accompanies ... not overwhelm it, or contradict it ..." (Whalley & Chester,
1988, p.11). They were stories in themselves, conveyed by a unique
language in which the sum total of elements is different from each
of the elements themselves.

In the words of the guru of the genre, Will Eisner (1990):

"In its most economical state, comics employ a series of
repetitive images and recognizable symbols. When these are used again
and again to convey similar ideas, they become a language – a
literary form, if you will. And it is this disciplined application
that creates the 'grammar' of Sequential Art." (p.8)

There has been an ongoing love-affair between children
and comics. Admittedly, sales to children have dropped drastically
in almost all countries that offer such information. This is primarily
because of the competition for young attention by so many interactive
media that often, ironically, use cartoons or cartoon language
as part of their architecture. But the definite link between comics
and childhood remains.

It is, therefore, quite surprising that one of the most respected
of all experts on the design of instructional text, James Hartley
(1994), limits the use of comics in textbook design entirely to the
affective domain:

"Clearly the affective role of instructions is to the fore
in comic strips: their aim being to attract and motivate less-able
learners. Often cartoon strips are used to present a simplified form
of instruction, but there has been little research on their effectiveness
in this respect. ... The general picture that emerges from studies
of text with cartoon embellishments is that cartoons often enhance
motivation, but they do not often increase comprehension." (pp. 87-88)

Since I believe that comics can increase comprehension,
along with motivation and interest, I proceeded with the following
survey.

The Survey: Comics and Cognition

Relatively little research has been carried out regarding the
possible effect of comics within instruction. As a result, not much
is known about whether it can be applied per se as a total
means of instruction, in the way that non-illustrated or illustrated
texts can be.

A significant body of research has indicated that illustrations
need not necessarily be important when it comes to the cognitive
domain. It is generally accepted that their role is affective, their
function most often a glorified decoration. They are considered an
enhancement to enjoyment and an inducement to the utilization of
other elements that would then help cognition. The prevailing belief
is that they are not direct contributors themselves on the cognitive
level, but are utilized only as a stimulus to awareness. Yet, hypothetically,
comics language has the potential to go beyond its use as affective
signposting and can communicate the full pedagogical message.

Though comics have relatively often been the subject of serious
critical analysis, the concentration seems to have been on the ideological
and structural nature of comics. When comics have been examined within
an educational environment, the analysis has focused on using existing
comics as a didactic tool (Volpi, 1977; Mareuil, 1980; Regan, Sinclair & Turner,
1988), rather than utilizing the "comics format' for instruction
in what traditionally has been the domain of text-filled books.

What little research exists about comics in instruction points toward
an attitude that is generally even more negative than in the case
of illustrated text. The comic's sequential narrative is seen as
breaking down into visual-verbal summary the essential points made
by text. The offhand implications of this are that much of the information
carried in the original text would be lost as a result of the process.

"Since there are limits to the amount of information (stimuli)
in visualization that an individual can interact with simultaneously,
one possible solution to increase the effectiveness of visualization
is to limit or reduce the amount of information presented by the
visual. Deleting irrelevant or superfluous information or stimuli
from an illustration enables the illustration to convey its designated
message quite rapidly; however, the process of reducing detail may
also unintentionally eliminate detail which would have been considered
as primary learning cues" (Dwyer 1978, p.157).

The pictures are very important: "No serious consideration of the
art of the comics can overlook the narrative function of pictures" (Harvey,
1996, p.3). In comics, illustration is one part of a symbiotic integration
that complements the text and compensates for that text which is
eliminated. The cueing becomes visual, and the peripherals, which
would contribute little anyway to the text on the cognitive level,
are excluded in favour of the message that needs to be communicated
and understood. This is what Dwyer himself has termed "information
compression" (Dwyer 1978).

So, can comics be a cognitive tool as effective as text and illustrated
text?

To address this question, I converted a text about Maltese history
taken from Vella (1974) into the comics format. In doing so I followed
comics language norms and narrative techniques, going for maximum
information compression through the use of a narration device. This
took the form of a father and son conversation which included flashbacks
and which is not present in the source text. Nothing was changed
regarding the information the text could communicate, except for
the numerous references in the original which were thought alien
to the format and left out. The book from which the text was taken
also has an illustrated adaptation by a number of authors and an
illustrator, Joe Mallia.[1]

For the experiment to take into consideration existing methods of
instruction, I also prepared an illustrated version of the text,
using photos as well as textbook and visual aids illustrations by
Joe Mallia. The resulting three versions were:

(1) text only version, taken directly
from the source – one and a half pages of 12pt on 14 text,
with another page comprising 12 references in 10pt on 11 text;

(2) illustrated text, same as (1),
but adding a visual dimension. This treatment contained seven black
and white line illustrations and three black and white half tone
photos, all captioned, amounting to nearly three pages, including
the 12pt on 14 text, plus another page with the 12 references set
in 10pt on 11;

(3) comics version of (1), spread
over three A4 size pages containing 36 panels of black and white
artwork of varying size and no references.

These were tested on 90 fourth formers (average ages: 14-15 years,
45 girls and 45 boys) coming from four different schools. 60 were
from different streams in Junior Lyceums, and 30, also differently
streamed, were from area secondary schools.[2] In
a 45 minute session[3] the
text, illustrated text and comics treatment were given to each of
30 students. Once they had read the treatment they were given, the
texts were collected and the students had to answer a questionnaire
comprising 28 questions. The questionnaire was intended to test (a)
short-term recall, primarily cognitive retention, and, to a lesser
degree, (b) acquisition of knowledge, (c) comprehension of the text,
and (d) imaginative application of facts acquired.

The structure of the questionnaire was varied. Technically: 12 questions
had 3 multiple choice answers from which the participants needed
to choose 1; 4 questions had a controlled number of spaces in each
of which single word answers had to be inserted; 12 questions left
space for open ended answers, in which the participants could write
between the length of a sentence and a short paragraph, as spaces
varied from a single line (questions 12, 17, 19, and 21) to 8 lines
(question 28).

The content was primarily divided into two sections. The first,
comprising 26 questions, dealt with recall of text content. The intention
was to see which of the treatments best aided fact retention. The
second, comprising the last two questions, asked for opinion and
speculation instigated by the text. The intention was to see if there
was any difference in inspiration instigated by any of the treatments.

A 7-question demographic survey was also carried out. In this, 3
of the questions were intended to determine background inclinations
towards the visual by the participants. They were asked to give their
favourite subjects at school, in which subject they did best, and
what they preferred to do in their spare time, whether to read a
book, listen to radio, watch television, use the internet, or play
a video game. Little or no significant difference in inclinations
was discovered, though in the case of the internet and video games,
not all had the equipment at home. Nonetheless, the results indicate
that the students all seemed to be "equal" in predisposition to text
and visuals. The subjects in which the students got the best marks
generally varied from those they preferred, but the tendencies remained
in favour of a text base, with arts/languages minimally predominating.

Data from each question for each treatment were comparatively analysed.
In all cases, chi-square analyses were also run, and no statistically
significant dependence between the data and the treatments was found,
meaning that most differences in scores among all three treatments
were minimal. But even though they were small, numeric differences
did give a clear enough indication that the comics treatment competed
well with the more accepted media of instruction.

Recall of content of the comics treatment was very close to that
of the illustrated text treatment, and both fared better than the
text-only treatment.

The intention at the outset was to find indications of whether the
comics as a medium can be used as an educational
tool to help cognition on the same level as text and illustrated
text. The latter two are the formats predominantly used to date in
school textbooks, with comics relegated to the role of attention
grabbers rather than that of teaching tools by themselves. The lack
of distinction made between the illustrated text and comics treatments
went some way towards corroborating the belief that the comic can
be at least as effective a teaching tool as the others. This proved
to be the case in both the areas of testing recall and of investigating
creative goals. The fact that the comics treatment fared as well
as the more pedagogically accepted illustrated text denies its popular
typecast instructional role.

But even if we were to think in terms of attention stimulation alone,
the reaction of the participants can empirically bear out the results
of all research carried out to date on comics as a tool within the
affective domain. Most participants were happy when they were given
the comics treatment. Others indicated lack of interest when handed
the picture-less text. If this is a case whereby "states of affection
and acts of cognition are inferred from psychomotor acts" (Kibler,
Cegala, Miles & Barker, 1974, p.34), then there can be no doubt
as to which of the three treatments fared best with the research
participants. The indications here are clearly that comics are at
a distinct advantage as attention grabbers and as ways of inducing
reluctant students to become interested in and follow what is usually
given to them in a "traditionally" text-based package.

This quantitative research was followed up by informal interviews
with a sampling of the students who had been given the comics treatment.
Only one open-ended question was asked ("How do you think the comic
helped you learn what was in it?"), which, though difficult
to validate scientifically as admissible research, was intended as
no more than a directed stimulus to garner spontaneous opinions from
the students.

The main thrust of the answers was that the comic told a story in
continuously paced pictures, and that they could see what the characters
were talking about. This helped them remember more than just having
pictures that described what was being read but did not tell a story.
Since the comic was short and in black-and-white line, little could
be said about colour and drawn-out narrative, which other (as yet
unpublished) research I have carried out on published comics yielded
as the main points of interest. The indications here are that the
sequence, aided by the character treatment, helped associative retention
in ways that the stepped pictures of illustration might not do. As
a result of both the quantitative and qualitative enquiries, it can
be stated that the comics medium has in its very nature the tools
for knowledge and procedural recall.

Conclusion: Instructional Potential

The comics medium can be an important instructional tool that can
work within the cognitive domain. The survey described above is a
basic, exploratory study of the subject, but it has yielded some
interesting and heretofore not noted results. It has begun to prove
that comics can actually teach by themselves, and are not just an
interesting but redundant insert within an instructional text that
utilizes other channels more traditionally associated with teaching.

This research implies that comics have the intrinsic potential of
being a valuable affective and cognitive tool and can be used in
instruction for, among others, motivational and retention purposes.

Notes

[1] Joe Mallia is one of Malta's
foremost instructional illustrators. He worked in the Education
Department throughout most of his working life, creating among
others the history textbooks most commonly used in the junior classes
(late primary and early secondary) in Malta.

[2] The achievement motivation and
general academic performance of students in the Junior Lyceums
is expected to be normally higher than that of students in area
secondary schools, since Junior Lyceums are streamed through restricted
accessibility by competitive examination.

[3] 45 minutes is the normal time
for a lesson in Maltese secondary schools. The questionnaire was
administered under test conditions to the students in their own
classrooms. Each class held approximately 21 students, meaning
that each treatment would be given to roughly seven students per
session.

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